Southern California -- this just in

Manhunt: Newspaper carrier, 71, in ICU after being shot by police

February 7, 2013 | 11:12
pm

A 71-year-old woman delivering newspapers with her daughter remained in intensive care Thursday night after she was shot twice in the back by Los Angeles police detectives during a massive manhunt for a fugitive ex-LAPD officer, according to the womens' attorney.

Emma Hernandez was delivering the Los Angeles Times with her daughter, Margie Carranza, 47, in Torrance early Thursday when police officers apparently mistook their pickup for that of Christopher Jordan Dorner, the 33-year-old fugitive suspected of killing three people and injuring two others.

The officers riddled the women's blue pickup with bullets in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue. Carranza was also hit, according to attorney Glen T. Jonas, and received stitches to a finger.

"The problem with the situation is it looked like the police had the goal of administering street justice and in so doing, didn't take the time to notice that these two older, small Latina women don't look like a large black man," Jonas said.

Jonas said the women's vehicle was also "the wrong color and the wrong model" compared to Dorner's.

"We trust that the LAPD will step up and do the right thing and acknowledge that what they did was unacceptable and we'll deal with it," Jonas said.

Sources said the Los Angeles police detectives involved in the Torrance shooting were on protective detail for a police official named in an online manifesto that authorities say was posted to a Facebook page they believe belongs to Dorner.

Photo: Police investigators work
around a blue pickup truck riddled with bullets in the 19500 block of
Redbeam Avenue in Torrance after a police protection team fired on it Thursday. The officers were protecting the neighborhood in the wake of
threats against a fugitive ex-cop. Credit: Bob
Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times